Chaos & Confetti

The Premise:

Chaos and Confetti will choose a cooperative board game to play.  Then, we will craft a challenge around that board game and give ourselves one shot at overcoming it.  No restarts, redos, or retries.  We either rise as conquerors or leave as chumps.

While some of our challenges may be a bit more straightforward, others will come with twists or hints of inspiration.  This is a test of teamwork.   

The Game: What Next?

What Next? is three branching adventures in one box.  Each story will unfold based on players’ choices and their abilities to complete mini-challenges.  

Each game will present a scenario and three decks: Location, Event, and Item.  Players will flip over locations cards which may present them with choices or events.  Both will affect where the story goes next.  Choices will often lead to a new location card.  Events will present a challenge for players to overcome.  Successes and failures may change the direction of the story, and players may also be able to earn items to use later in their adventure.

What Next? comes with several times that can be used for event cards.  These items include puzzle pieces, grabbing items, a push puck, and more.  Other events will use items in the room or the cards themselves to create mini-games.  Players never know what kind of ridiculousness the game might throw at them next.

The game also includes oddly shaped blocks.  These blocks are used to build a Peril Tower.  When making bad choices, encountering danger, or failing tasks, players may have to add blocks to their tower.  If they ever knock over their tower, it’s game over and the adventure is failed.  This adds a bit more tension and danger to every action.

Finally, as if there wasn’t to create unpredictable fun, there are also time dials included.  Every time players’ read a new location card, they must turn their time dial.  Whenever they end up on the danger space, they must read the back of a location card instead.  The backs tend to be harder and more dangerous for players.  Since the dial is randomized at the beginning of every scenario, this is just one more way to add twists and replayability to What Next?

Do you have what it takes to navigate through wild adventures which will constantly have you surprised by what’s next?

The Challenge: An A+ Adventure

Every scenario comes with its own decks of cards, but they also come with a unique Adventurer Challenge.  This gives players an added goal beyond simply reaching the end of the scenario.  Of course, these challenges are not easy and the proper alignments of events are never guaranteed.

Despite being our first time playing each of the scenarios, we have decided to attempt the Adventurer Challenges.  Not being foolhardy, we know not to expect perfect runs each game, so our goal is to achieve at least one Adventurer Challenge after playing through each scenario once.  

We hope to prove ourselves not just any adventurers, but A+ Adventurers!

The Set-Up:

We will use the normal setup procedures provided by the game.  We will also make sure to read each Adventurer Challenge, so we know what goal to strive to achieve.

Game 1 –  Drums of Koala Cave: 

Our first adventure took us on a quest to save our professor from a mysterious jungle island.  To be great adventurers we must also obtain a glowing feather, a dancing mushroom, and the professor’s wristwatch.

We decided to go in the order the scenarios appear in the book, which also corresponds with their increasing difficulty.  Our first true taste of What Next? turned out to be a lot of wacky fun.  It wasn’t long until we ended up in underground caves full of koala and then had to deal with a massive koala attack.

Along the way, we encountered a wide variety of challenges that we actually performed pretty well on.  At one point we reached three stacked peril blocks, but we removed one by the end of the adventure.

Actually surviving the quest didn’t feel too difficult, but we came out of it with zero of the challenge items.  I guess we just made choices that took us nowhere near them.

Game 1 Results:  Chaos and Confetti win the scenario, but fail to achieve the Adventurer Challenge.

Game 2 – The Skyscraper Caper: 

The second adventure put us in the shoes of a superhero trying to get some rest.  The only problem is that our elderly housekeeper is trying to kill us.  Our goal is not only survive but to assemble two super items as well.

The heighted difficulty level made itself clear early on as we quickly started adding peril and barely making through challenges.  Within the game, our superhero scrambled to stay alive.  Outside of the game, we sweated over survival while also laughing at the game’s humor and uniqueness.  

Lasers, traps, and explosion went off as we gathered a number of game items.  Unfortunately, we weren’t getting what was needed to actually assemble super items.  We couldn’t complain too much though since many of the items did help us on our adventure.

In the end we finally got the chance to nap.  Sadly though, we only were able to assemble one super item, which is one less than the adventurer challenge asked for.  We here heroes, but the super-part proved to be questionable.

Game 2 Results: Chaos and Confetti win the scenario, but fail to achieve the Adventurer Challenge.

Game 3 – Blinky’s Great Escape: 

Our final adventure and our final chance to establish ourselves as A+ Adventurers.  This time out, we played as a small robot who wants to leave his life as a factory worker.  To be the best adventurers, we need to win the game with two injuries (Blinky can take damage which affects his abilities).

Once again, the game had us making decisions, hoping for the best outcomes.  The mini-games were as silly as always but we kept beating them.  Despite this being a scenario with the highest difficulty rating, “Binky’s Great Escape” did not feel too hard.

Despite fighting drones, overcoming our scary boss, and braving dangers to make a feline friend.  We kept coming out on top, even going as far as winning a slot machine mini-game.  Luck must have been on our side because we made it through the adventure without taking any damage at all.

It felt strange that our high skill level actually prevented us from achieving top adventurer status.  Odd, but those are the rules.  Blinky made his big break, but we ended up breaking our streak of accomplished cooperative challenges.

Game 3 Results: Chaos and Confetti win the scenario, but fail to achieve the Adventurer Challenge.

FINAL RESULTS: Chaos and Confetti successfully navigated their way through all three scenarios, but they never achieved the status of great A+ adventurers.

Chaos’ Final Thoughts:

I purchased What Next? for Confetti’s birthday because it sounded like a fun experience.  I am happy to say that I was right.  The story’s are wacky in a great way, but the mini-games along the way are what take everything to the next level.  Often we had to stop laugh at what the game had us doing.  What Next? gets a big thumbs up from me and I hope they release more scenarios in the future.

Confetti’s Final Thoughts:

I really liked What Next? a lot! It’s silly game that gets you outside of your comfort zone, and I can see it being even more fun with a larger group. I really hope they release more scenarios!

Wrap Up:

This outing is officially Chaos and Confetti’s first “failure” to achieve their challenge’s goal.  It should still be noted that they did complete every scenario successfully, so how much of a fail is it really?  The most important thing is that they had a lot of fun and will take on whatever cooperative challenge comes next with renewed focus and determination!